THE INFO CULTURE.

Read His Lips

Political Pundits Cant't Get Enough Of George W,'s Facial Quirk

February 15, 2000|By Julia Keller, Tribune Staff Writer.

Blame it on those beads of sweat. No, better yet, blame it on a single bead, one that was poised and pellucid on Richard Nixon's upper lip during an especially tense moment in the 1960 presidential debates.

From that delicate bead of sweat has emerged a raging torrent of political truth: As the face goes, so goes the candidacy.

The latest presidential aspirant to discover the pitfalls of our superficial age, wherein a selected physical attribute is interpreted so fiercely and relentlessly that it comes to epitomize one's destiny, is George W. Bush.

His supposed sin: that smirk.

Like Nixon's televised sweat, the smirk has come to represent in certain minds all that is wrong and potentially disqualifying about Bush's ambitions. Just as Nixon's excruciatingly public perspiration allegedly revealed his discomfort in going head to head with a cool, dry and casual John F. Kennedy, Bush's smirk often is mentioned as proof that he's a lightweight playboy, a smugly superior smart-aleck who might use the presidential limo to pop wheelies.

Each time Bush, who seeks the Republican presidential nomination, slides a quarter-point in the polls, the pundits cluck and point to that smirk. Writers for august publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and the on-line magazine Slate have ruminated about its implications for America's future leadership:

Can a smirker win the White House?

The New Yorker's Joe Klein deconstructed the smirk, citing Bush's propensity to "raise his chin, lift an eyebrow, and curl his lip slightly." The smirk, according to the veritable army of armchair psychoanalysts who provide political commentary for the TV networks and public affairs magazines, is a natural outgrowth of the candidate's patrician upbringing, of his imperial and apparently endless self-regard.

A smirk, this theory goes, is your face's way of patting yourself on the back.

Bush's second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary prompted the panelists on last week's edition of "The McLaughlin Group" to offer the Texas governor some unsolicited tips: Refine that tax plan? Spruce up that health-care package? Pose with a Girl Scout troop?

Nope. Work on the smirk.

"He needs to get rid of the wise-guy smirk," said Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift.

So this is how it is in the year 2000, as we face the first presidential election of the new century: Apparently it all comes down to a candidate's mug. The fate of the free world hinges upon Bush's upper lip. (The Bush campaign is not unduly concerned about Smirkgate; according to campaign spokeswoman Kim Black, "The governor has not received any formal speech training," beyond advice from his media consultant, Mark McKinnon, on "public impression stuff.")

Everybody knows that media analysis of politicians and political campaigns has become increasingly trite, increasingly focused on the shallow and irrelevant. But who knew it would come to this? Who knew that some of the best analytical minds of a generation would be concentrating not on Bush's ideas and policies, but on his physiognomy?

Opinions differ as to what actually constitutes a smirk. Is it merely a wince of selfish triumph? A scrunched-up brow, accompanied by a tight-lipped smile? One dictionary definition of a smirk alludes to "annoying complacency." How, though, does one infer complacency from a facial expression?

The worst aspect of a smirk, perhaps, is the word itself: You cannot say "smirk" without smirking. It sounds like a Lewis Carroll word, like something made up to apply to a goofily offputting fictional character.

It's true that Bush isn't the only presidential candidate to suffer from this elaborately sanctioned lookism: Former Republican hopeful Steve Forbes endured numerous remarks about his blinkless stare, the ophthalmological equivalent of a stuck record, while Democratic challenger Al Gore has been called "wooden" so often that he probably measures himself by the board foot. Moreover, Bush himself has contributed to reporters' zeal to overanalyze the slightest, most minute aspect of his actions and personality, because he gives so few interviews. Reporters forced to subsist on crumbs learn to stretch them into full meals.

Still, Bush could have a legitimate beef about a world in which smirks suddenly are poison. Just a few years ago, smirks were in; the ironic age was in full swing, with comedians David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld smirking their way to fame and fortune.

Now, however, we seem to have entered a post-ironic age. Earnestness is ascendant. Bush simply was caught, mid-smirk, in the middle of a paradigm shift. (President Clinton, for his part, was the victim of another paradigm shift; he thought he was serving under President Kennedy's rules, when powerful men could do pretty much what they pleased in their private lives and nobody would tattle. Imagine his surprise when the press corps, instead of chuckling to itself and turning away from naughty behavior, actually wrote about it.)

These days, apparently, only jerks smirk.

One thing the pundits have overlooked: Maybe Bush can't get rid of the smirk. Maybe it's simply a part of him, like his fingerprints and eye color, like his love of baseball. Even in childhood photos, Bush has the same glib, sneaky look that would come, all these years later, to haunt him.